Fifty years ago, if you said you wanted better work-life balance, most managers would have smiled and assumed that meant you wanted to work until the balance of your life was over. Fortunately, times have changed. The best employers strive to help workers strike the right balance between work and enjoying life away from the office so they are re-energized when they return each day.
Every manager or business owner must ask, “Do my employees like coming to work or is work a repressive grind that they can’t wait to get away from, unwilling to spend an extra minute at work?”
Helping employees balance work and life has been a hot topic for years. Overlooking this need can cost business owners productivity, increased turnover, morale and–according to the Mayo Clinic–even contribute to poor employee health.
Here are a few ways we make our workplace less like work and more like a club that employees want to be part of.
Take work home
We publish a fun company newsletter called Beryl Life and send it to every employee’s home address. It has photos from recent events and articles highlighting coworkers and their contributions to our work family. We al
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This month, Wired Magazine is running an interesting cover story entitled The Future of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free. The article was quite thought provoking, but the general focus of the article was pretty deftly summed up in the final paragraph:
A generation ago, when people made the choice to switch to plastic, credit cards did not just replicate cash; they fundamentally changed how we used money. The ease with which people could make purchases encouraged them to buy much more than they had in the past. Entrepreneurs suddenly had access to easy — though high-interest — loans, providing a spark to the economy. Now, while it may be hard to predict what innovations PayPal’s platform will enable, it’s safe to say that the payment industry is going to change dramatically. As money becomes completely digitized, infinitely transferable, and friction-free, it will again revolutionize how we think about our economy.
The technology discussed in this article is undeniably cool. It will make transactions for many purposes much, much easier than they’ve ever been. The acquisi
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QuickTax
is the first of four different tax programs that we’ll be having a look at over the next 2 weeks. I entered my tax info into all four programs to get an idea of how each one works, and while they have many similarities, each one also has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.
QuickTax is the #1 selling tax software in Canada for a reason. Intuit, Quicken and QuickBooks are well-known brands and no other software includes as many additional features. I tried out the Standard version of QuickTax, which is likely the best version for the majority of Canadians. There is also a Premium version that may provide some additional benefit for investors. If your tax return is very simple, there is a Basic version, though you might be better off with one of the free tax programs available.
I found QuickTax easy to install. Just a few clicks and the software was installed and immediately looked for updates. QuickTax Standard 2009 includes an EasyStep Interview that helps you through every step of your return. The
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I originally included this email in the reader mailbag this morning, but my answer to Susan’s email (below) went on so long that I thought it warranted a post of its own.
Yesterday my husband found out he has lost his job. We don’t know what to do.
He was making $38,000 a year as an IT specialist. I make about $36,000 a year as a school teacher. We have about $10,000 in credit card debt spread across three cards and a $1,300 a month mortgage payment. We don’t have anything saved either other than some retirement account money.
I am so scared we are going to lose our house and lose everything! What do we do? Help!
First and foremost: don’t panic. No problem is solved well in panic mode. Bad choices – choices that you’ll regret down the road – are made when you panic.
Take a deep breath. Here are seven things that you should attempt to do in the coming days.
Be proactive. Some people “turtle up” in bad situations like this and spend their time avoiding the problem, doing things like playing video games and watching television. Now is the time <
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Like many entrepreneurs, Adam Levy expected to do well with the music equipment company he started in 2002. Armed with an MBA and pile of money made in the late-nineties technology boom, he invested six figures in his new venture and waited to cash in.
Only things didn’t go as planned.
His business partner, a music industry mastermind, abandoned ship within the first 18 months and the company floundered. Seven years later, Levy still wasn’t making a living wage and was six figures in debt. Out of cash and out of choices, he filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
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“If I had known then what I know now, I would have just cut my losses, swallowed my ego and moved on,” says Levy, who’s based in Hoboken, N.J. “I didn’t and it almost cost me my marriage.”
Slash Your Budget
Of course, declaring bankruptcy–which experts say should be a last resort–isn’t the only way to stop the bleeding. Reducing your spending should be at the top of your list.
“Getting out of your office space is one big thing I’ve seen people do,” says Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. S
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